Nidda and Lar

My name is Max. And I’ve been living in South East Asia for about 6 months by now. 2 months in
Thailand, where I initially flew into, feeling a little bored in suburban Queensland where I live with my
mother, and I suppose around 4 months in Laos. I caught a bus over the Laos border when my Thai visa,
which had already been extended for a month, was about to run out. It’s a hobby of mine to do a bit of
painting now and again, and I’m travelling with rather a lot of things, perhaps 40 odd kilograms worth of
paints, and primed wood panels to paint on and my projector and laptop and I also probably bought a
few too many books from home for myself to look thru too. And anyway crossing the Laos border via
bus seemed like the path of least resistance at the time, with planes usually having around 20, 25kg
minimums here.
Once in Laos, I spent a couple of weeks or so in Luangprabang, not far from where my bus dropped me
off at. LPB has a curfew of 12, and all the bars close around then and I had heard nice things about Vang
Vieng in the south.
A girl I’d spent an evening with who’d left my room after our love making, had gone down to Vang
Vieng, and perhaps somewhere in the back of my head was a thought that I might see her while I was
down there and that something might happen.
I saw the girl once or twice by chance around town but she was seeing another fellow by then, and did
not seem to possess much of a desire to maintain even a platonic relationship with me. I remember her
asking me how I was doing in one of the two bars in town, Viva Pub, one evening to which I replied,
‘Honestly, I’ve been better…’
‘But you’ve been worse right too?’ she asked me.
‘Mm’ I replied, then she walked off.
Four or five days later she left the town. I busied myself with painting, and various larks.
Perhaps one month into my stay I talked to a very beautiful brown skinned young Lao lady in Viva Pub
one evening, her name was Nidda and I had some tubes of acrylic paint with me in my totebag, and I
asked her if I could make a painting of her on some watercolour card I had with me. I depicted her
topless in the painting, perhaps with the view that this might somehow increase my chances of making
love to her. We exchanged facebook information and I messaged her a few times, tho nothing much
came of it, and one evening, however many nights down the track I saw her in Viva Pub again, with a
Laos friend of hers. The friend was pretty, with light brown skin, rather narrow eyes and something of an
indentation in the bridge of her nose inbetween her eyes, which I found to be rather cute. And I learned
that this girl’s name was Lar.
Her English seemed limited to perhaps about a dozen words or so, but she seemed friendly enough. At
some stage in the evening, rather drunkenly we took to holding hands and kissing a little here and there,
and Nidda, Lar, an American fellow and I all went back to the large reception area below the large hotel
slash hostel that I’m currently staying in. Some other people were hanging out at the tables, chairs, and
on the metal swinging bench down there, before the hostel’s relatively small rectangular swimming
pool. And we all talked and drank some of the hostel’s complimentary low grade whiskey, with water
from plastic cups. And after awhile, for a lark, I tried to pick Lar up and drop us both into the pool, but
we fell down on the ledge before the pool and Lar then became rather upset with. I spent a good 20 odd
minutes apologizing and trying to console her and she eventually came round.
Later that evening Lar and I went back to my room and made love. She stayed in my room for a few
weeks. I bought a new laptop, from the computer store up the road, as my last one hadn’t been working
so well, since Thailand. It’d been rather old to begin with, I’d first bought it in Hampi, India however
many years back, and the moniter was only displaying itself properly whenever it was tilted in a certain

way, and the axis that one could raise and lift the moniter with was rather lose and wobbly, and at all
other times, the moniter would show a greyscale series of bars, so I took it to a centre to get fixed, and
the chap there didn’t fix the problem with the screen entirely, and also somehow seemed to have
damaged some of the wiring to the keyboard, making it so that several of the keys no longer functioned
then. Later that afternoon when I discovered this it was too late to take it back to the shop and I took it
back there the next day, and he said that he could not fix the keyboard, that either a new keyboard
would have to be bought, or a usb-jack keyboard could be used. I bought a usb jack keyboard, and took
it home, to soon discover that it did not work either. And soon gave up on the thing entirely.
Once I’d purchased my new replacement laptop, I idly started to read back thru parts of my several odd
novels, novellas, and my collection of short stories.
I had initially thought that I’d finished all of my writing before coming out on this trip and that all of it
was now in a good state, but reading back thru it then, it occurred to me, that a lot of the writing still
had a way to go, and wasn’t as polished and good as I once thought it was.
I had overused the word soon way too much for example, and I found many stretches of dialogue to be
too whiney and moany, and in a lot of places I felt I’d used far too many words than necessary to narrate
and describe things. So I decided to set myself to reading back thru and fixing up all of my stories one by
one again. I had about seven odd novels slash novellas, and perhaps about twenty odd short stories.
And while this was going on, I found the love making with Lar to be somewhat dispassionate; she did not
like to kiss me on the mouth or at times look at me too much while we were together, and I did not once
climax. Over time I found out that she had a stepfather, back home, who raped her. She came back to
my room, sometimes in the night, from where she’d been out drinking in town, and would drunkenly cry
and stay up for hours.
On one such evening shortly after she’d woken me in the middle of the night, she said to me thru some
tears, ‘I want die Max. I want die’
‘No, no, no Lar’ I replied stroking her arm, ‘it’s alright, it’s ok, don’t worry, it’s going to be alright’
‘Alright for you’ she replied then added some words in Lao, ‘but not me’
‘No, no, no, it’s alright, it’s alright kid’
‘I want die Max. I want die, really’
‘No, no don’t say that’
One evening at the nightly night market in town, she said to me that she wanted a new shirt, so as we
passed the gentleman, who made characitures on t-shirts for people, with an airbrush gun, I asked Lar if
she wanted such a shirt with her picture on it.
‘Yes’ she said.
I asked the chap for a shirt, and Lar chose a photo of herself that she liked from her phone, then gave it
to the chap. And I then watched as the fellow attached her phone to a holder, then started to clamp a
fresh white t-shirt onto a white wooden board before him.
‘Wait, could you write the word beautiful in Laos below it?’ I asked the chap.
‘Ok’
‘Wait’
I then got a piece of paper out of my pocket, and wrote the word beautiful on it, then handed it to the
chap.
‘Could you write that on it, in Laos language, Laos language?’
‘Ok’
I gave the chap 100,000kip then Lar and I walked on thru the market.
When we came back to the fellow, I noticed that he’d painted Lar with white skin, and large bulging

breasts, despite the fact she was of a rather short petite build, and then below this he’d written the
phrase, ‘Beautiful in Laos’
‘Great, thanks’ I said to the fellow.
‘Ok’ he replied then he started to folded up the shirt and as he was about to put it into a plastic bag I
said to him, ‘no, no, don’t worry, it’s ok like that’
I handed Lar the shirt and she unfolded it and looked at it.
‘Do you like it?’ I asked her.
‘Yes’
‘Great’
Later that evening when I was half asleep in my bed, I noticed some orange light on the wall down from
the foot of my bed. Some shadows were playing over the wall there too, and I could also smell smoke in
the room. I got up and saw that Lar had set fire to the shirt, which was then laying in flames over the
back of one of the two wooden chairs in my room. I got up and took the shirt outside into the top floor
corrider outside my room; it is the first room on the left, and I only had to walk a few yards, to get to the
hotel’s rear balcony, where I left the still-burning shirt, over the tiled concrete railing of the balcony. I
then looked out of the back of the hotel, at the stars out.
‘Fuck…’ I muttered to myself.
And I soon went back into my room and consoled a weeping Lar some more, as she sat at the foot of my
bed.
‘I want die Max. I want die’ she sobbed to me.
‘No, no, no’ I said to her.
She later went back outside, and bought the shirt with the burnt out image of herself on it back into my
room, wrapped it in toilet paper, then put it in my trash can.
The days went on and I continued with my editing, and to let Lar stay in my room, and to buy her cheap
meals in town when she was hungry. And one afternoon while she was laying in bed scrolling down thru
her phone, and I was working more on my editing, I noticed her watching a video in some social media
app or another which featured a pretty young asian woman, who seemed to be asleep in her bed.
Someone began touching her as she laid there, and the lady moved her eyes and lips in curious ways.
‘Sexy! Sexy!’ I said to Lar, ‘Yeah! Sexy’
‘Sexy! Sexy!’ she replied with a laugh.
She continued to watch the clip. The fellow stopped touching the lady and then began to push himself
into her instead. She still didn’t seem to have woken up and there was a certain expression on Lar’s face
as she continued to watch the video.
‘Don’t watch it’ I said her, ‘it’s just making you sad. Stop watching it kid, it’s just making you sad’
‘Mm’ she replied and continued to watch the short clip till the end.
A few days later Lar and I made, a trip to her village perhaps some 30 odd minutes drive outside of Vang
Vieng, on my cheap 100 dollar motorscooter, that I’d picked up from a fellow traveller awhile back.
And the house Lar lived in with her mother, step father, and young sister, was rather small and poor,
without running water and an outside squat toilet. And I learned of how Lar kept her money in a
fannypack, with the old woman, in the house down the hill from hers, as otherwise, her father would
take it, buy methamphetamine or beer, and then act brutally towards Lar, her mother, and perhaps
even Lar’s younger sister of about 8 or 9 or so, tho of this last one, I had no evidence to support and so
was not certain. And I also noticed how there was no door to Lar’s room, but rather only a door frame
with a nailed up bed-sheet hanging over it.

As a tourist one must return to Vientianne once a month to extend their visa at the immigration office
there, this can be done twice for a total of three months, before they must leave the country, if only
momentarily at the Thai-Laos Friendship bridge.
Unfortunately one cannot extend their tourist visa for two months at a time in one trip, so he must
travel to the capital once a month to pay for and process his extension.
And I’d left this task till the last minute that time, when my visa was already two days over its limit—I
had left it too late on the Friday, when it was due, and the place had been shut over the weekend— and
I left in a hurry shortly after I’d woken relatively late one Monday morning, while Lar was still back in her
village.
As was my custom, I left my room in Vang Vieng still checked out, while I was away, as it always seemed
more trouble than it was worth to pack all my many things away, including my bulky hand made metal
easel, which I assembled myself after losing my collapsible metal tripod one, if I was only going to be
away in the capital for a couple of days. Also I liked my room; it was rather large, especially in
comparison to all the others in the place, and it was good to be on the top floor for the view, and I didn’t
want someone else to check into it while I was away.
The room was only costing me 10 dollars a night, and I still had perhaps around 100 odd thousand
dollars, both in inheritence money, and from a criminal compensation claim I won after I was rather
greviously assaulted in a mugging as a teenager.
Anyway, after having woken up, at whatever late hour in the morning, I left without taking breakfast and
was really rushing to get to the embassy before it closed at half past 4. It was very hot and bright out,
but the speed of my motorscooter, bought a pleasant breeze onto my skin. My bike did not have a
particularly strong front head lamp so I did not like driving at night, especially as every second odd car or
truck you passed on the road seemed to come at you with their high beams on, dazing you, and also as
there are often many potholes on the roads here.
One night, on my way to the capital in fact I’d hit one and came off rather hard and had to get 4 or 5
stitches in my chin, at a small road-side hospital without anesthetic, and only some cloth to bite down
on for the pain.
It was quite a long drive to the capital, perhaps around 5 hours or so, and I knew that after you’d paid
the visa extension fee, they did not return your passport with the extension-stamp in it, until 2:30 the
following afternoon. It usually started to get dark around 6 or so, and so you usually had to stop into a
roadside motel in the night so as to avoid being on the road after dark.
I figured that if I got to the embassy before it closed, I could pick my visa up the following day, and be
back home in Vang Vieng, and back to my editing in three days, rather than four. And I felt in the middle
of quite a roll with the editing and did not much like the idea of beating around in the rather smoggy,
unpleasant capital without my laptop or much of anything to do for an extended period when I could be
back in my room in Vang Vieng working on the book.
I sped rather a lot on my way to the capital hoping to get there in time, and at around 4pm, a relatively
shortway outside the capital I got a flat front tyre. It was a rather bumpy ride to the nearest garage;
which turned out to be a small run down roadside shop and the lone mechanic there was tending to
another chap’s bike at the time. After he’d finished this he patched my tyre, then charge me 5000 kip for
it, perhaps around 80 Australian cents. I thanked him then checked the time on my ipod, it was 4:10
then, and I headed on for the capital.

Some ten odd minutes later, inside the city centre, in some light traffic, I noticed three pretty young
western women walking by on the side of the large multi-lane road.
‘Little tourist bitches…’ I thought to myself as I looked at the girls, ‘What a fucking twist, pretty young
women out walking with their friends...
Wow isn’t life fun? Isn’t it so great to have friends!
Hashtag holiday fun. Hashtag holiday memories. Hashtag don’t rain on my parade’
I heard a crash and felt a vibration on the front of my bike. I’d rammed into the back of someone’s large
white car. I couldn’t have been going over twenty ks but still the person’s rear lower casing had come
unattached and the car looked quite expensive.
A thin Laos lady, in a black polo shirt, and long navy wrap skirt came out of it.
She started spreaking to me in rather fast and aggressive sound Lao.
‘Shit’ I thought to myself, ‘Fuck. Ah my god man, this gook bitch, fuck off.
And I was so fucking close too’
The woman held her phone up and without asking, then took a photo of my bike then of me. I made an
obscene gesture at her in it. The lights had changed and people were driving around us. And the hot air
smelled very polluted. Two Laos women came over to us from the side of the road.
‘What happened? What happened? You hit this lady car?’
‘Ah…’ I replied.
I heard these women talk with the lady driver, and I noticed the word farang a few times in their
exchange.
‘You come, you follow us’ one of the women said to me, ‘You can come, follow us, ok?’
‘Ok, ok’ I replied, I kicked started my bike, tho instead of following the ladies I drove off into the traffic. I
drove thru two red lights and managed to get to the embassy just on 4:30 to find out that they in fact
shut at 4. Some people were inside, and I asked them to process my extension but they said that they
couldn’t that late.
I went to the immigartion office the following day and paid for the visa-extension and for my four days
overstayed and dropped my passport off and the uniformed fellow behind a both inside then told me to
come back at 2:30 the following day to pick the passport up. I thanked him, then spent the rest of the
afternoon swimming in my hotel’s pool, and watching movies on HBO in there. I’d bought my sketchpad
with me and drew a little in it too as I watched the HBO.
The following day whilst on my way back to the Immigration Office, I stopped at some traffic lights, not
far from my hotel. Some police officers came up to me from a traffic control both beside the road, and
told me to follow them. The officers asked me for the keys for my bike, which I gave them, then told me
to sit inside their booth, and one of them told me in his rather aggressive pigeon English of how I had hit
a car and driven off a few days back and they had photos of me on CCTV.
The officer was in a khaki uniform and had an old pistol in leather pouch on his hip.
‘He could shot you with that and kill you if he so desired’ I thought to myself, ‘Has been happening every
day for the last 8 years in Syria’
My bike was taken away and I was detained in the booth and an hour or so later a chap from an
insurance agency came to the booth where I was being detained. And he escorted me via car to the
immigration office, where I was told that I had to pay the equivilant of around 800 Australian dollars, in
Lao kip, for repairs to the lady’s car, as she wanted to get an official replacement part from the car
manufactor’s dealership. Papers from the dealership were shown to me in Lao, with large figures on
them. The lady soon arrived at the immigration office and some talk in Laos continued around me and I
heard the word farang come up rather a lot in it. I apologized to the lady and agreed to pay for the

repairs to her car and offered her my hand, which she would not shake. I told the officials that it would
take me a day to get the money and they told me to pay them right away, but I told them that I did not
have that kind of money in my account at the moment, and I would need to contact my mother and ask
her to transfer it into the right account and it would take at least a few hours to transfer. I then told
them that they had my passport and bike still so I would need to come back anyway.
I eventually managed to convince the chaps at the department to allow me to return with the money
the following day. And they told me to be there at 10.
I contacted my mother and she arranged the money for me.
The following morning, I caught a tuktuk to the D.O.I for 10 and before entering it I went to a nearby
ATM where I removed the money then I headed into the D.O.I where I paid the lady and the officials off.
I then asked for my passport and motorscooter back and someone wrote an address down on a piece of
paper then told me that I could find my passport and scooter there.
I caught a rickshaw to this address.
None of the uniformed officers inside this new office knew where my things were, nor spoke any
English, nor seemed particularly inclined to help. After awhile I said to the fellows, ‘I want to kill myself. I
want to die, you understand, I want my life to end’ I then did some little mimes, of myself cutting open
my wrists, shooting myself in the temple and hanging myself. But none of them reacted much to this. I
was asked to leave the building around 1 as everyone was going out for their lunch. I sat around
weeping on a bench outside. An hour or two later the officials came back.
I asked them more about the passport, and one of them said that someone was coming soon.
An hour or so later, this chap arrived and told me to follow him, and lead me out onto the polluted hot
road outside, where he had a motorbike parked, he told me to get on, and I did so, even tho neither of
us had helmets.
I was taken over some main roads, then off a dirt one to another office. I noticed that the lady’s car, I’d
hit was parked in the dirt lot beside this yard. The lady’s rear lower casing had been reattached, but I
could tell it had not been replaced as the slight scratch mark my bike had made on it was still there.
Inside this new office were some of the officials from the previous office, who I’d mentioned my suicidal
intentions too, some new officers, the lady whose car I’d hit and her husband.
I sat down on a plastic seat inside and everyone stood around me. I was informed by an officer that I had
to pay another fine of 110 American dollars, or the equivilent thereof in Laos kip.
‘Ok, ok so after I pay this fine, I can collect my passport and still stay on in Laos for the next month?’ I
asked the chap.
The lady’s husband then said to me, ‘Don’t have to pay, but if you don’t pay, you can’t leave, don’t have
to pay, but if you don’t pay you can’t leave here’ the fellow and the others then laughed here. ‘You pay,
you pay fine then you leave, you leave, you go back your home farang’
‘Ok’
The lady, her husband and most of the other officers then left the building.
I paid the fine, with most of the remaining money in my pocket, then was lead upstairs to retrieve my
passport, my thumb print was then asked for on a declaration entirely in Laos, which I gave, and then my
signature was asked for which I then gave as well.
After I’d signed the declaration, my passport was then returned to me from a desk draw. I flicked thru it
to see that I’d received my month’s extension in Lao ok.
I apologized to the officer and he replied ‘ok’, then walked me downstairs into the dirt parking lot beside
the office, to where my bike was parked and gave me my key.
‘I’m sorry again’ I said to the chap.
‘Go farang’ he replied.
And I then drove off.

From swimming in the hotel’s pool a few days prior, and not cleaning my ear thoroughly thereafter I had
also developed swimmer’s ear around then, a condition where unsanitary water, leads to a build up of
bacteria in the ear, and a build up of earwax there after. I had then tried to get this excessive wax out
with a q-tip but had only succeeded in pushing it further in, blocking up the inner ear canal of my left
ear, to a rather uncomfortable state.
By then I just felt like I wanted to get out of Vientiane however and back to my laptop and my editing as
soon as I could.
I went back to my hotel in Vientiane, picked up my bag, paid for half a day, at the owner’s request then
started to drive back to Vang Vieng.
About two or so hours into my driving the light began to fade, and it was rather hard to drive the rest of
the home thru the dark but I did so all the same.
Back in Vang Vieng Lar soon returned and spent a little more time in my room. I edited for a fortnight or
so before my condition with my ear was so unpleasant and worrisome that I decided to travel back to
the capital to have it checked—I had tried at the small hospital in Vang Vieng, but the doctor there had
told me that they did not have the faculties to remove ear wax there, and to head to the capital instead.
I left in a hurry and told Lar, and Nidda, that they could crash in my hotel room while I was away if they
wanted, as I did not want Lar to have to return to her abusive home situation.
I took my laptop to the capital with me, and over however many days finished my final run of my 850
page novel, Lucy there, and it’d been the last in my long list of things to edit. I renewed my visa for
another month, and had the earwax removed.
In my Vntn hotel room one evening. I got a message from Nidda, she told me in her pigeon English that
Lar had stolen some money from my room.
‘What money?’ I asked her.
She sent me a screenshot of a google image search for a 1000 rupee bill. I’d had an old one beating
around in my suitcase. I knew such a bill was worth about 10 dollars, but it was an unpleasant thought
that Lar would steal from me all the same.
I sent Nidda an angry face emoji then said to her, ‘tell Lar love her.
Please not steal from me.
Please give back’
‘She spend’
‘On what?’
Nidda then sent me a voice mail message, ‘fuck off, she spend your money, ooo…
So stupid boy’
‘Me stupid boy?
Why?
Don’t call me stupid Nidda.
I don’t like it’
‘Told you it’s true but don’t understand.
Dinner?’ Nidda had suggested in previous messages that she came to Vientianne from her hometown
halfway between Vang Vieng and the capital and we take dinner together.
‘Ok’ I replied, ‘Are you coming to Vntn today?’
‘Vv
You coming
Get up.

Stop my home
Yes or no
Hurry up
You come today, tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow’
‘When you go to vang vieng
You can get me at home I’ll go to vv again’
‘Ok’
‘Tomorrow we go to drink ok
I don’t drink long time, I think stop forver but I can’t
3 month I don’t drink beer
Lar sleep with my boy again
It’s funny fucking bad but I don’t care’
‘Ah well…
Let’s get drunk’
‘Yes
Tomorrow’
‘Yeah’
‘You buy beer
Ahaha’
‘Ok sure why not
My pleasure’ I then sent her an angelic face emoji which my phone’s auto-dictionary suggested to me.
‘Come early tomorrow’
‘…What time?’
‘10’
‘Ah Nidda that’s way too early’
‘Come 10 or can’t go’
‘Nidda’
‘Make me change my mind’
‘Look Nidda I’m your friend ok?
Don’t make me play game with you
Ok’
‘Im not play game it will make me lose’
‘Ok’
‘But come early ok’
‘Alright, I’ll see what I can do, probably not 10 tho, but soon after I get up, I guess’
‘Ok’
The following morning my ear was aching again, and I felt as if there was some fluid inside of it, so I
decided to go to the hospital there to get it removed before it became more of a problem.
I had to queue up in hospital for a few hours to get my ear seen to again. The rather dour and unfriendly
female doctor there, who I’d seen the previous time, told me to use some drops for 30 minutes three
times a day, for 4 days then return to her to have the wax sucked out again, by the pump that they only
had in the capital.
I told her sure, thanked her for her time then went to the drug store nearby the hospital to pick up the
drops.
While I was driving away from the hospital I thought to myself, ‘fuck it, how bad can ear wax be, it’ll
probably be fine. It’s not like the whole canal’s blocked up like before, it’s just a little fluid or something

that moves about when you equalize your ears and swallow sometimes, who gives a shit? Just go to
Nidda. She’s smoking dude you’d be a fucking fool to pass that up’
I picked my bag up from my hotel, paid for my room, then set off for Vang Vieng.
I sent some messages to Nidda and she said if I was late her parents would find her and she’d get in
trouble and not be allowed to go. I drove rather fast again and as I drove I thought of the photograph of
her and Lar in their underwear, from behind, that she’d sent me a few days back.
Lar and I had stopped sleeping together awhile back, and I had blocked her from my fb messenger too
after she’d sent a string of rather abusive messages to me, one of which in which she suggested that I
take my own life.
‘It’d be nice to get your hands on an actual woman for once’ I thought to myself as I drove, ‘if that’s
even possible for a piece of shit to this world such as you.
…But still, lady love, the dream, no more internet pornography, true romance, true feeling, become a
fucking human being, just like the fucking rest of them’
I pulled over and exchanged some messages with Nidda, and later managed to pick her up ok from
where she was waiting for me on the side of the road, halfway between Vang Vieng and Vntn.
In time it started to get dark out as I drove.
My scooter had come with a small luggage rack welded onto the back of it, and by then one of the bars
in the rack had developed a split in it and so the thing was rather flimsy, and however long back I had
also zip-tied an old green plastic fruit crate to the rack for storing my various effects in.
And my laptop bag, which I’d packed all my other things for the trip into as well, was then in this crate,
secured by a bungee chord, and the crate and rack were wobbling around a bit as we drove, especially
when we went over the occasional bumpy, unpaved or potholed stretches of road. And I asked Nidda to
onto the crate and the rack as I drove on and she did so with one hand.
‘And Lar’s been keeping my room locked ok?’ I asked Nidda.
‘Yes, Lar care, beautiful’
‘Ok’
The light began to fail as we drove. And after awile it was totally dark out and we pulled over.
My bike too had come with a little phone holder accessory, that was affixed below my right rear vision
mirror, which one could use for running google maps on his phone as he drove. And Nidda turned the
light on on her phone and duct tapped it sideways onto the phone holder, so that the light was showing
above it and we bent the holder around, on its little bendable black rectangular support below, so that
the phone’s light was then facing down at the road. This didn’t terribly increasible the visibility before
us, but it was better than nothing.
And as we drove on, Nidda continued to hold the fruit crate with one hand, and, with her arm slipped
below my right arm, which I was holding onto the bike’s handlebar with, her phone fast to the phone-
holder with her other.
‘Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!’ she said in her childish voice a little as we drove on thru the darkness.
‘Yeah! Yeah!’ I replied.
Later that night, when I at last got back to my room, it was very dirty. There were clothes and trash
everywhere and plates of food and beer bottles on my thin art table at the far end of the room, along
with noodle bowls with rotten old noodles and food in them. The loud Korean music was playing from
their restaurant behind my hotel as it usually did between 6-11 or so and Lar was lying on my bed.
She talked to Nidda in Lao.
I asked the girls if we could clean my room and they said they would do so tomorrow.

I sat down on my bed and said to Lar, ‘hey uh, do you know anything about a thousand rupee bill that
went missing from my room? And I really, really will need you guys to clean this place up as soon as you
can, please’
‘You think, I steal from you huh?!’ Lar replied rather angrily getting up from my bed.
‘Hey, hey, calm down, I wasn’t accusing you. I was just asking’
‘You say, you say, you just say.
Why I take your money hey?!’ Lar then spat on my floor, ‘Why? Fuck. Fuck you. You say I fucking steal?!
You say I fuck steal you, why? Huh? Fucking steal? Fuck you!’ she then threw a plate with some old food
on it down onto my art table with all my half finished paintings and the beer bottles and whatever else
on it.
None of the bottles knocked over and the plate didn’t crack but the food did spill out rather a lot.
Lar said a few things in rather aggressive sounding Lao amongst which I caught the word farang a few
times then added, ‘you say I fuck steal? Fuck you. Why I do this, hey? Fuck you’ She then spat on the
floor again.
‘No, no, it’s alright’ I told her, ‘don’t worry about it, it wasn’t worth much, calm down it’s fine it was only
worth like 10 dollars, forget it, ok?’
‘You say I steal huh? I take your thing. Why I do this?’
‘It’s fine, don’t worry’
‘Fuck Max’
‘Ok, ok, it’s ok, don’t worry it’s really not worth much, don’t sweat it’
The girls put their make up on, and got dressed and awhile later it was almost ten, so we headed out to
the free drink hour at Viva pub in town together, and I took my sketchpad and pastels with me.
We took some of the complimentary beers in plastic cups from the bar inside, where the incredibly loud
trap music was playing, and then went outside with them. Nidda sat on a plastic chair on the terrace out
there, and Lar danced in her long red and white plaid dress and told me to smile and then traced a smile
over her lips.
‘Yeah’ I replied, then took another sip from my plastic cup of beer. As I continued to drink I looked at
Nidda some more, and she looked rather sad and lonely and lovely and I started to make a sketch of her
in my pad. Midway thru it a young man came and stood behind her and held her hands. He then kissed
her on her forehead, then walked off.
Nidda later tried to sit beside me and look at my sketch of her but I held it to my chest so that she could
not see it.
Later that night, by which point I was rather drunk, she and Lar ran off down the road together holding
hands. I watched them run off. They stopped a shortway down the road, then looked back at me, then
kept on running.
I continued to sit there for a while then went back to my room, which was still rather messy, and I
noticed my painting of Demi on my hand made easel had some brown gunk, or paint, or another stuck
to it in some places.
I sat down on my bed, opened my laptop up before me, and put some music on on foobar to drown out
the pop music from the Korean restaurant behind my hotel.
‘What is a man, but a hunter?’ I thought to myself, ‘and whatever he cannot catch, he goes without.
Pass the test, enjoy the best. Pass the test, enjoy the best.
I think back to that young lady from Viva pub this evening, in her short stripped shorts, standing with her
legs in their alluring shaven shapes, leaning her weight on one hip, then the other, with three men

standing before her talking to her at once— I don’t know if she realized it, but those three chaps, would
not have been there around her all evening, had she been a young man. Are women that oblivious?
Maybe. A man like any commodity, has his value levied by supply and demand; is there a large quantity
of avalible men? Yes. What makes this man special? What stimulates demand for him? Is he physically
attractive? Is he confident? Is he sad? If the fellow is sad, then his value is at an all time low and he can
kill himself if he so desires. The only thing I would recommend however is that he get it right the first
time, so that you’re not stuck catatonic in a wheelchair for the rest of your life.
…I feel done with this place. I suppose, South east Asia is where one goes on vacation. A place one goes
to vacation and hook-up and get wasted, not a place to live as a foreigner, one is not at all welcome here
if they are not native born; they are an out-group, an other, an interloper, a reluctant end to stimulating
the economy.
Tho I suppose if you were to ask a pretty girl she would most likely hold quite a different view of this
place; oh Laos and Thailand, I had so much fun there on vacation with my friends! We met so many
friendly, confident and handsome young men, and I hooked up with a couple of them too lol’
I tabbed into google chrome then in a new tab, I searched, ‘how to OD on diazepam’, I browsed a few
links for a little while, beginning to weep as I did so, then began to idly pen a suicide letter to my sister
Beth in my head, ‘Beth by the time you read this I’ll be dead by diazepam overdose, I don’t want you at
my funeral or telling people that you knew me, or that my death affected you in anyway, not that I
imagine it would, but all the same, please, please don’t, at least have the dignity for that.
And I just want to say, that I hope all the sex you had with all the boys, all the parties you went to, all the
laughter you had with all your friends, while you took little to no interest in your younger brother was
worth it.
All the memories I have of you are bad; you going out with the other Beth and the rest of your friends
into the valley that weekend and me asking if I could come to which you said no—perhaps as you
wished to punish me for something or another at the time, I can’t recall now. You sitting around with
Ryan Gruell and all the other boys around the swimming pool at our old house and laughing with them
as they made fun of me.
Good luck with your house in Brisbane or Melbourne; your two point five kids, with a handsome socially-
conscious young man, Rob, or whoever’s replaced him by then, and with your career and your pencil
skirt, and you’re 70 to 80, 90 odd, years worth of meaningless existence, before you die and I cannot tell
you how glad I am that I now will never have to think of you and all the other horrid ghosts ever again’
‘A few cards of diazepam…’ I then thought to myself, ‘And a fifth of Tiger Whiskey, some soda to drink it
thru, should do the trick, right? Fuck it… Fuck ‘em all. Good riddance you fucking animals’
I closed the lid of my laptop and laid back on my bed, still feeling rather drunk from Viva pub.
‘…I think of Nidda again…’ I thought to myself, ‘having her back rubbed by that boy as she sat on the
stool at Viva pub, not one day after I drove her up by scooter. I think of him kissing her on her
forehead... Of the suggestive photos she sent me before, when she wanted the lift here, when I was on
my way back from Vientianne, the photo of her in her underwear, of the message signed with the x on
the end, of her talk of how she wanted to get drunk with me, and hadn’t been drunk in 3 weeks and
couldn’t stand it...
And like a fool, I fucking fell for it, hook line and sinker.
Like a fool I sat, waiting for her to want me, like she wanted every other single fucking thing beside me,

like I sat for Hildie, and Sophia and Liam and my sister… Like a fucking fag, for them to snicker at behind
my back, oh my god lol, how pathetic and desperate.
I suppose if you’re a girl anytime you go out in the evening you probably have at least three different
boys to choose from, and it’s just a question of deciding which, if any, you’d like to take for yourself that
night; Oh, is he too nice…?
…Oh, I think I should like to take something of a bad boy for myself this time…
Hmm, tho you had a bad boy last time and it was trouble. Perhaps one more gentle for a change this
time…
No, no let’s go for a bad boy again. Yes tattoos, black hair, blithe indifferent remarks. Such an allure to
one who doesn’t give much of a damn about me—maybe I can be the one who changes him…
He just doesn’t care, and that’s so hot lol.
There’s nothing in man. And all the while if you’re sitting on your own at a bar, thinking of killing
yourself, writing things to that effect in your pad, you will be of no interest to anyone.
People will walk by and see you writing in block letters at the top of your pad, I WANT TO DIE…
And pretend not to notice.
What is there in man? A desire to get drunk, to make love and to have fun et c’est tout’
As I continued to lay there I remembered overhearing Garrison, the Canadian bar-tender at Viva pub
saying to a young woman, from behind the bar, earlier that night, ‘if I was a party balloon, would you do
me?’ to which she laughed at then said, ‘that depends…’
‘…I think of the young British woman standing with her back to where I was sitting on the stool so as to
block me from being able to face, sit in the circle with, or talk to her and her friends…’ I thought to
myself, ‘All of my life, I have been this, nothing to the eyes of this world.
I think of the lady who told me to stop moaning when I complained to her about the drilling that had
started to take place early in the morning in the vacant lot behind my hotel room.
Have I seen anything but cold lust in the eyes of man? Oh if ever I did, it feels so long ago now as if it
might’ve only been a dream’
The following day I took my breakfast of a bowl of fruits with yoghurt, in the usual restaurant that I go to
in town up the road from my hotel. I didn’t have much of an appetite for whatever reason, and as I sat
there slowly working my way thru my breakfast, I looked at the occassional people walking by. I saw a
lot of groups of western travellers, some of which had heavy rucksacks on. And after I saw a third girl
walk by on her own I thought to myself, ‘huh …
What is this, walk alone for 10 minutes to raise money for breast cancer day—are you up to the
challenge? Can you go the full ten minutes without a friend or lover in stride? Get a friend to sponser you
today!’
And I continued to slowly work my way thru my bowl of fruits.
I hadn’t painted anything in perhaps around two months, as I’d been so busy with all my editing work.
‘I just…’ I thought to myself, ‘When you haven’t painted in so long, your brush seems as if it weighs of
lead... When you’ve been painting frequently it can become as light as a feather, but just when you’ve
been away from painting for so long it becomes so daunting. And all the people just seem so, dismal, not
individuals, but more so one great big horrible all converging machine. Ah, I’m losing my mind.
…I think of quotes from Van Gogh, ‘just slap anything on…’
‘I cannot tell you how happy I am to have taken up drawing again…’

‘If there’s a voice in your head that says you can’t paint, then by all means paint and that voice’ll be
silenced’
‘I have picked back up my paintbrush which I cast aside in my extreme discouragment and I have said to
myself ‘you will rise again’
I think of how nice it would be to make love to a woman in real life and free myself from these terrible
thoughts, these terrible websites; to know actual love with a woman, what it is to be a man, to turn
myself into a painting locomotaive, as Van Gogh once termed it, who was no longer scared of the blank
or half-finished canvas— wood-panel, whatever, but had broken the spell of ‘you can’t’ once and for all,
who no longer sat around idly re-reading, re-checking old emails, waiting, hoping for people to get back
to his communiques as if there might be a damn thing in that; fishing without any fucking bait; thinking
about things to watch and download, but was instead gloriously busy—no time to think about pussy or
girls, but if it comes your way great, if not, fuck it, so be it, I have bigger fish to fry. A painting
locomotive.
Oh, er, the less you want it the easier it is to find, and form an emotional connection first, and girls like
assholes, and all the other silly little theories and angles and advice to fill up your head and heart and
how sweet and smooth and curvy and cutesy they all look, as they walk by with their friends and lovers
or else sit in bars with them…
No. I’m going like a painting locomotive. Yes. That is how it must be. The hell with thinking of this
terrible machine, when the world turns its back on you, you turn your back upon the damn world’
After breakfast I went back to my room. ‘Maybe you should check if your camera’s still in your suitcase’ I
thought to myself, ‘just in case. I mean she did take that 1000 rupees apparently, so…’
My little retractable-lense Canon Powershot camera, I’d last left in it’s black, zip-up belt-loop carry case
was not in my suitcase. And I proceeded to search my entire room for it but it was definitely gone. I
thought of all the photos I’d taken since the start of the trip. How handy an excuse it was to talk to
strangers; men, women and children beside the road, as I rode my scooter around, and how it felt as if it
helped me to imbibe the culture here, somewhat as it were.
‘That’s it, fuck it’ I thought to myself, ‘fuck her, the little bitch, I could give a shit. I’m done’
I put all the girl’s stuff in plastic bags and left it at reception, then told, Vladimir, the gangly Russian guy
there not to give either of them the key if they asked.
I then returned to my room and began to clean it.
Once I’d finished my cleaning I took a diazepam, an over the counter medicine, used to treat insomnia,
in South East Asia, to take the edge off my nervous tension then did some rather depressing
rudimentary collage art in the moleskine journal my mother had bought me at the airport before my
trip. ‘Fucking moleskines’ I thought to myself as I worked, ‘god fucking damnit I hate this fucking brand
man. You spend 30 fuckin’ quid on a notebook and the paper’s thin as fuck, shitty quality paper, and
anything you write bleeds thru to the otherside. It’s such fucking horseshit man. What a fucked up
world. Oh let’s fucking save a bunch of money by making a shitty ass product and sell it for fucking 30
dollars a pop, fuck you. Fucking Moleskine, fucking capitalism. Fucking everyone. Virtue tho we relish of
it cannot so, innoculate our old stock. We are arrant knaves all. Believe none of us’
Later that evening I went into the corner store I usually went to, beside my hotel.
I drank a couple of ciders, there and pated Mimi, the small puppy there who belonged to the owner,
who I was with when she got hit by a car. And who’d limped around for a month or two after before she
got better. As I patted Mimi I said to her, ‘I love you girl, you’re my only friend in this world, you know
that?’
As I continued to drink I thought to myself, ‘Ah shit, I haven’t painted anything in way too long man.

Painting distracts me from this world and whatever it is, or may appear to be in its inconstant shapes. All
the grime, all the people, all their lust and fun’
I finished my cider, then headed onto Viva pub, a shortway down the road. I got to speaking to a very
beautiful young Canadian Asian lady there, and to her pretty American friend.
I asked the pair if I could sketch them and did so for a bit on the unprinted back of a flier for Viva pub’s
free drink hour. And after talking to the pair for a bit I asked them if they might like to come back to my
room where I could try to make a painting of them and they agreed.
Back in my room, when I was midway thru setting up my tripod easel, the asian girl said that she had to
leave as she was worried about a friend.
The American girl said the she would stay tho.
My room was rather hot and I felt uncomfortable in my shirt. And I told the American girl that it was hot,
and I took my shirt off and then asked her if she minded and she said it was ok, but that I should know
that she wasn’t going to do anything with me. And I told her that that was fine.
She asked me if she could look thru my sketchpad and I told her that that was fine.
The drawings and collages in it were rather morbid and she asked me if I’d ever tried to kill myself and I
said yes twice, and asked her if she had and she said, ‘yes once’ when she’d tried to OD on pills.
We talked for a little while longer then she said that she loved to smoke weed and that that was her
vice, and asked me if I knew of anywhere where she could find any and I said that Ste, a handsome
young British bartender at Viva Pub could probably sell us some.
And so we headed back there, tho I stopped in at the corner store on the way there, and bought myself,
another can of cider with the idea of sneaking it into viva pub and drinking it there, then put it in the
front pocket of my hooded sweater. I asked Ste, who was working behind the bar then, if he could sell us
any weed and he said yes and that he could do a bag for me for 100,000 kip and the American girl and I
put in 50,000 each for it.
I drank another small beer Lao at the bar, and the American girl got to talking to an English chap.
I noticed Lar again and she looked rather sad and I gave her the can of cider, and suggested that she
came along with myself, the American girl, the English boy and I back to my room to get stoned. And she
agreed.
Back in my room, the American girl rolled a joint for us and we all got stoned together and she also
looked thru my foobar music library on my laptop and played some Beach House for us, and I told her
and the English boy of how Lar was an artist, and I retrieved the stack of her artworks on printing paper
from below my art table, and showed the group the somewhat childish, pen and crayon, landscapes Lar
had made, and some of her sketches of me, and herself, smiling and blushing while looking at me, that
she’d made while I’d been working on my novel.
I’d previously had the drawings stuck up on the walls above my bed with rolled up duct tape, but Lar had
taken them down while I’d been in the capital, and put them below the table instead.
Lar left at some stage that night, and later the English boy and very shortly after the American girl.
And after she’d left I thought to myself, ‘God damnit you pussy… You had a fucking window there, she
hung around for a bit after the English chap left and you were too much of a little bitch to make any sort
of move. Liam, fucking, anyone else for sure would’ve gone for it. The hell with you’
Lar and Nidda were in and out of my room the next day, talking loudly as I was trying to sleep.
And they’d bought Lar’s stuff back into my room too.
After awhile I got up and sat with them.
‘This isn’t working for me’ I said to Nidda, ‘do you understand? I mean, has Lar got anywhere else to go?
A cousin, an aunt? Especially after I leave the country’
‘Yes, yes, maybe cousin in Luangprabang’

‘It’s not safe for her to stay at her home with her new father. I mean, yeah…
You understand?’
‘Yes, yes, I know, I say, I tell her’
‘She needs to be safe, she needs to be kept safe, you know the word, safe?’
‘Yes, I know safe’
‘I just, can’t keep having her here tho, and there’s no b-option, it’s like, surrender my room, to just, total
chaos, and anarachy and things going missing, or feel like a total asshole, because I’ve thrown this 19
year old girl out to the wolves, and I can’t rightly do that. I can’t just shrug my shoulders and say oh well,
if this 19 year old kid gets raped in her sleep, then so be it. I can’t do that, you understand? But frankly
tho, I just, can’t keep doing this either, I just, I can’t keep doing it’
Nidda laughed a little then said, ‘No understand, because talk so fast’ she laughed a little more.
‘Yeah…’ I then said.
Lar had some Korean blue berry whiskey with her. She has no job and it’s my understanding that she
sometimes sold her body for money. After returning from Vientianne the last time, I’d noticed that she
had on a new gold watch and a new pair of shoes. And one time back when we’d been sleeping
together, and I was touching her while she was laying naked in my bed, after a shower, I noticed a
dislodged prophylactic in her behind.
Lar handed me the bottle of blue berry whiskey and I drank it. And it was rather strong. I set it down
rather firmly on the few inches of slightly lowered tile beside my bed, then said, ‘Holy shit, these
Koreans, they don’t fuck around do they?’
A joint was rolled out of some of my weed, that I’d put in for with the American girl the night before.
And as we smoked it Nidda said, ‘I came here one week, find only 1 boy. She come here 1 week, find
3,4,5’
‘Holy shit it would be nice to be a girl’ I replied.
And I smoked some from the joint when it came to me.
‘I think I should kill myself’ I said to Nidda, ‘Overdose on pills, get drunk, leave this rotten place, you
understand?’ I made a mime of myself shooting myself below my mouth, then mimed myself cutting my
wrists open, ‘you understand?’
‘Oh’ she replied with a slight laugh, then she and Lar returned to talking in fast Lao.
‘Nidda, I just want you two out of my room, you understand?’
‘Yes, yes’
The two talked in Lao a little more.
‘Where were you last night anyway?’ I then asked Nidda.
‘I sleep my boy house’
‘You fuck him?’
‘No, no’ Nidda laughed, ‘we no sex night, too tired, afternoon, yes’ Nidda laughed again.
‘What was his name?’
‘Don’t know’
‘Where was he from?’
‘Don’t know’
‘Huh... How big was his dick?’
‘He…’ Lar said then encircled her wrist with her forefinger and thumb, a short exchanged then followed
between the two in Lao, ‘and you’ Lar then said to me then encircled her toe with her forefinger and
thumb, then laughed.
‘That’s not even fucking true. Demi, Sophia, Danielle, none of them complained’ I looked at Nidda,
‘…wait, so let me get this straight, you didn’t know this chap’s name, or where he was from and you still
had sex with him?’

‘Yes’ she replied with a slight laugh.
‘Sounds like the actions of a little slut to me’
We continued to smoke. After a bit, we all handed around a mango and ate it from the hand, like
monkeys might, and I listened as Lar sang along to Mac Demarco on my computer in her pigeon English,
‘My, my my…’
The marijuana seemed to stir up something of a sentimental side of myself, and I found myself
remembering some of the little pecks I’d received here and there on the lips from Lar on occasion when
she’d been drunk.
‘…Not seeming ones that would lead to anything but more so just like nice little somethings to say
thanks from her little girl mind’ I thought to myself.
I remembered her squeezing one of my testicales once, when she was horsing around when I was trying
to edit in my bed, then saying to me over and over, ‘Hurt my egg! Hurt my egg!’
I remembered how she would on occasion do a little dance move where she would twirl her hands
around, then cast them high up to one side, and bow her head, like I’d seen Korean pop stars do in
music videos. I remembered myself tearing a cigarette from a packet she’d bought into my room in half
and then saying to her, ‘cannot smoke, can’t do, bad for health, you understand?
And how I’d sent messages to Nidda while I was away saying to her, ‘tell Lar can’t smoke, bad for health’
then sent her emojis of cigarettes and skulls.
‘It’s no good tho’ I thought to myself tho, ‘being the nice caring, sensitive guy, it’s no good, girls quite
simply don’t go in for it’
The girls continued talking in Lao and laughing.
‘Still got to try and fix up your fucking painting of Demi too’ I thought to myself, ‘christ knows why a girl
as pretty as that allowed you to paint her.
Best thing I ever painted and it got fucked up by this little bitch who trashed my room. Quite possibly
stole my camera too, unless some guy she had in here for sex did.
Whatever as if it could fucking matter terribly in such a big world. I think the bottom line here tho, is
that she doesn’t care about you. Doubt fucking Nidda ever did either. Probably just thought to herself, ‘I
have no money for bus fare and I need a lift to Vang Vieng to see my boy. He’ll do, better butter him up
with a couple of flirty messages first, then I’ve got my lift’
Force of habbit right? You learn what works and what you can get away with over twenty odd years as a
girl. Ah well, what’s a thought? It’s fucking fairy dust. What’s a person? An opaque ghost, Wednesday’s
friend is Friday’s despised enemy.
Fuck it man, just return to your painting, and just hope that you can again make something that looks
halfway decent and that might help distance you from all of this…’ I looked at the damaged painting of
Demi on my handmade easel on the desk on the far side of my room, ‘Christ that looks fucking
foreboding’ I thought to myself, ‘Best thing you ever painted and now, you’re gonna have to fuckin’
rework it... I thought I was done. I really thought I was done.
Ah, I wonder if I can even ever paint again... And as much as the machine might call me melodramtic, I
think it’s ultimately a question of life or death, because without it I do not have much of anything in this
world.
…Ah, if only you could become a fucking asshole; dumb, thoughtless, careless, a brutal self-assured,
fucker, and then you could be with a girl like Nidda. Not care at all about them or if you over-played your
hard or if things fell thru and they would be drawn to that, the challenge whatever one might call it.
Shit man, you should go to Nairobi, start huffing fucking jetfuel, then come back here and you’d
probably get all the girls.
And if it killed you then fuck it. Who could give a shit, right?’
I looked more at the painting, and the other half finished ones on my desk, ‘…What a thing it would be

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